Ex-Sure Fit exec opens vendor's first outlet store

By Carole Sloan -- Home Textiles Today, 6/23/2003 12:00:00 AM

LEE, MA —

The first Sure Fit retail outlet store opened here recently, owned by Liana Toscanini, former vp, insurgence, for Sure Fit.

The store, with 700 square feet of selling space and a few hundred more for stock, "is a totally independent entity. It's a test by Liana, and we have no plan or strategy for more stores," said Bert Shlensky, president and ceo of Sure-Fit.

"Things like this are what happens when Liana quits; the last time she started our catalog and Website," Shlensky added.

Toscanini explained her decision to leave as needing to work in Berkshire County rather than New York. "And I had two choices — becoming director of a non-profit up here or doing a store." She joined Sure Fit in 1993 in charge of retail marketing and spent the last six years commuting from the Berkshires to New York.

The store is in the Prime Outlet Center between Polo Ralph Lauren, Coach, Timberland and Gap and "the car count is huge - on holidays, 6000 cars, daily 2000 cars - and they come from Albany, NY across to Boston and down into Connecticut."

The store, which opened May 1, carries 70 patterns from the Sure Fit line, catalog items — "essentially a catalog store," she remarked — and the full Sure Fit merchandise complement of slipcovers, window coverings, decorative pillows and bedding products.